I would say the most common types of vinegar in the UK are
* malt vinegar (a dark brown vinegar which we put on chips and in mint sauce, and which the Internet tells me is made of malted barley - but I never knew that until today, I just knew it as the vinegar my mother had in her cupboards when I was a kid - if you say "vinegar" to me, malt vinegar is what I think of)
* white/red wine vinegar
* distilled vinegar/spirit vinegar (a clear vinegar made from distilling malt vinegar - it's used for pickling and for cleaning purposes)
* Balsamic vinegar (an Italian vinegar used on salads and in Italian recipes)
* cider vinegar (vinegar made of cider - often considered to have health benefits and often also used for rinsing your hair - a somewhat more recent arrival in my cupboards than any of the aforementioned... » vollständigen Text anzeigen

Table salt is a common term in English. As I understand it, it simply means "(non-specialist) salt for eating" as opposed to salt for non-food purposes such as the dishwasher or gritting and also as opposed to more expensive forms of salt for eating, such as sea salt or rock salt.

you should have had to have told me before It's correct grammar, but it's very unlikely that
anyone would say that.
you should have had to tell me before --- is better, but still unlikely. My first answer above is good.

Dieses Forum bietet keinen kostenlosen Übersetzungsservice. Bitte unterbreite zuerst einen eigenen Übersetzungsvorschlag! Maschinelle Übersetzungen (Google Translate, Babelfish, usw.) zählen nicht als eigener Versuch.
- - - - - - -
This forum is designed to allow users to share ideas and provide mutual help in correcting translations and understanding vocabulary. All feedback is given voluntarily by users and it cannot be expected that they will willingly provide free translations to lengthy texts where no attempt has first been made by the person posting. Machine translation (Google Translate, Babelfish or the like) does not count as your own attempt.

What's the difference between "demokratisch" and "urdemokratisch"? Does "urdemokratisch" relate at all to "grass roots"?
Grass roots = the ordinary people in a society, movement, or organization:
She spent years trying to design education policy from the grass roots up.
grass-roots

Do you have an example sentence? I think people might use this term in different ways. Without any other context, I would say it's democracy without caveats, ancient Greece style. "Everybody" gets one equal vote. "Ur-" typically hints at the origin of whatever follows. Demokratisch is what we have today but it has been changed and adapted from the original.

Thanks, Ivy and Alex. Unfortunately I can't put my sentence in for non-disclosure reasons and I can't find a similar one on the Internet. Based on what the two of you have said, I'm currently thinking "thoroughly democratic", although it does still sound like "grassroots democracy" to me Wikipedia(EN): Grassroots_democracy
("Grassroots" is, as far as I can make out, generally considered a positive word in democracy, it's a kind or "power to the people"/"power to the little guy" kind of phrase). I can't use "grassroots democratic" though, as that sounds odd, I'd just have to say "grassroots" and assume people would make the same connections as me.

PS I think I can say, though, that my sentence definitely doesn't actually refer to history or the beginnings of democracy or ancient civilisation, it refers to something in the present, which is being described as "urdemokratisch".

I would see "grass roots" more as "basisdemokratisch" while "urdemokratisch" is more "regarding the basics of democracy" like e.g. parliamentary debate (something which President Groper is not very fond of).

Today, both in the UK and in Germany there are representative democracies in place. We elect a representative that makes decisions on our behalf. It's democratic but not quite like in ancient Greece. The original democratic model gave every eligible citizen a vote on every issue. That's urdemokratisch. There may be more decisions like this at the grass roots level but I would not consider them synonymous. (I know I'm simplifying both the current systems of government and history.)

There are different possible meanings for "ur-". I would rather think [3] in wiktionary is intended. The ancient society of Athens had democracy among free people, yet the economy was largely based on slavery. Not a good role model for European countries.

lifo makes a good point. The meaning of ur- often isn't clear, especially with invented words carrying that prefix. I would think that urdemokratisch has a close relationship to the Urabstimmung, which is a referendum of sorts conducted under specific rules depending on the organization in question. The point of almost all Urabstimmungen is that as many people as possible participate in them.

Thanks, lifo and Micahel. 4;Michael, in retrospect, that makes sense for my context. They were holding a vote on something (a favourite food/drink, not anything political) and I imagine they wanted as many people to vote as possible.

Unfortunately we can't enter the infinitive "die Zähne auseinander bekommen" because that does not work as an infinitive in English. My entry "'sb.'s tongue loosens" = "jd. bekommt die Zähne auseinander" which is a perfectly good compromise has been unfairly deleted. I have since tried another variant. Any suggestions, please?

"Die Zähne auseinander bekommen" means that an usually taciturn or shy person finally speaks. It can not be used in the sense of "loose sb.'s tongue" (e.g. loosening the tongue of a prisoner) or even in the way of "a bottle of scotch loosened my tongue" (this would be "Eine Flasche Scotch lockerte meine Zunge").

Surely, shy or taciturn people drink alcohol to loosen their tongue ? In any case, either drinking alcohol or the reduction in adrenalin release caused by acclimatisation to the stressful situation can 'loosen the tongue'.

Anyway that does not help with a translation for "Endlich bekam ich die Zähne auseinander" , because we do not say in English "I managed to get my teeth apart." , (unless one had accidentally glued one's upper and lower dentures together with superglue.)

I try to figure out the somewhat strange relationship Americans seem to have to the word "fucking". The media treats "fucking" as a total breach of p.c., at least a phrase like "the f-word" suggests this (like "the n-word"). While there seems to be a wide social consensus that saying "nigger" is not appropriate, there are a lot of people who use "fucking" quite a lot in spoken language - as an intensifier or spoken exclamation mark in every second sentence ("my fucking car did not start this morning"). And they do not seem to bother at all.

Then I recently listened to a discussion where an older lady got upset about this word and reacted with "stop swearing". Now I would make a clear distinction between vulgar/ raunchy language and swearing - for the latter you need a religious reference. Isn´t that a clear distinction for Americans also?

I'm not American, but "fucking" is definitely a swear word. I've never heard that swearing needs a religious reference. Perhaps it did originally, but that's not what "swearing" or "swear word" refers to nowadays.
Oxford defines a swear word as an offensive word, used especially as an expression of anger.https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/swear_word

an interesting little tale from one of my (grown-up) sons. He was with friends and family. As soon as the older people (35+) left, the language became a lot more "earthy". Before it was quite neutral, afterwards it was effing this, effing that etc. He said the change was quite abrupt.

... but the mode of conveyance of their meaning. It seems more or less (well, a little less so) alright to say
"f-word" or "c-word" even so the brain of a listener immediately knows what is meant (and the speaker knows what he explicitly thinks). But dare you say "fucking" or "cunt"! The effect is definitely the same - the listener thinks what he is supposed to think.

Chat:

drinking alcohol in public from a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag isn't much different ....

non-natives should be aware that sensitivities vary greatly, between countries, social stras. age groups and gender. Although TV and the media have made greater use of swearing, at the end of the day, it can still be offensive and give a very very bad impression of the speaker.
Non-natives should proceed with extreme caution.

US Americans may be reluctant to weigh in here, because any generalization will almost certainly be met with an unending stream of exceptions. But a few observations may clarify things.

The media may seem to equate the f and n words, out of fear that they would be found offensive. But that doesn’t make them equally objectionable. I suspect people in the media privately use the word “fucking” but shun the n-word, just as the rest of us do. In my experience “fucking” is commonly used as an intensifier, but only when the speaker is sure that it will be found acceptable (or at least overlooked).

I agree with uffie. Non-natives should proceed carefully when using expletives.

Being raised in a German christian family in the 70s, there was a big distinction between "expressing anger with vulgar language" (f.e. shit / Scheisse), and swearing, which was clearly defined as "expressing anger to god" - common examples would be "Kruzifix" and "Herrgott Sakrament". This was 10 out 10 in offensiveness - all non religious words where only 5 out of 10. But I am not sure if there are even good translations for these words in english, and I never noticed that someone uses these type of swears in english. So ok, "effing = swearing" - got it (still a bit strange).

Would people categorise these words as swearing, if used in a context of expressing anger? Again, in the value system I was raised, offending people with vulgar language is one thing, offending people with any kind of religious reference is a different level (and should be avoided at all cost).

And of course I am aware that in the US, the number one no-go offensive area is race, which is based on history, religion seams to be an area that declines.

It's probably cultural and probably also partly depends on the family you were raised in and their religious views. I find "Jesus" and its abbreviation "jeez" and also "bloody hell", which has a religious origin, much milder than "fucking hell" or "fuck". UK society is generally less religious than US society, but I'm not sure that it's much different for people in the US.